Apple Mavericks

So who is actually using it and are there any horror stories?

Using it on late 2009 iMac. No horror stories, but very slow to do some simple things like switch users. No major advantages I can see. If it weren’t for needing it to run some software I need I would not have bothered, so unless you have a compelling reason to switch I can’t see any reason to bother.

I’ve got a MacPro that could be upgraded to it but it came from my daughter and so I haven’t got the discs for any of the software running on it (MS Office). If I could be certain I wouldn’t need to reload it all I’d certainly give it a try.

Me. I’ve found nothing in the OS to alarm me, but there are dragons lurking. If you use the iWork suite of programs (Pages, Numbers, Keynote) you may find that they get upgrade automatically to the new versions. The new versions are designed to be the same experience on both OSX and iOS devices and even in a browser in their beta “cloud” version. All very impressive, but a LOT of functionality has been chopped from the OSX versions to bring parity to the mobile versions. As an example you can no longer do a mail merge in Pages 😯

LOTS of forum activity and negative reviews about this. It’s not Mavericks that’s the problem as such, but Mavericks will steer you into areas you might want to avoid.

I look forward to the day when Apple perfect their plans to make the mobile and desktop work seamlessly together, but they’re doing a lot of dumbing down to get there.

Multiple monitor support works much better for me. That’s the main change I see day-to-day. Removing the leather effects from calendar etc. is definitely an improvement too.

Other than that.. seems as no slower than Mountain Lion – if anything a bit faster. I am using it fairly recent hardware (2 different MBPs – both 16GB and quad core, one a Feb 2011 model and the other a new model) so I’d be a bit upset of they struggled.

No problems in the update – and I can’t see any reason not to go for it. Parallels 9 is my main business-critical app for work and it works just fine.

Using it on a 2009 macbook. It runs slightly better and quicker than Mountain Lion on my Mac. Nothing revolutionary compared with Mountain Lion.

using it on latest macbook retina, were issues with brushes in photoshop freezing but turning off openCL acceleration and updating wacom drivers seems to have sorted it.
my Eizo calibration software wouldn’t work but they patched it after a month. no other issues.

Hmmmm. Thanks. Using Mac Mini for design, work and maybe I won’t bother switching just yet.

The iWork problems should sort themselves out over time as there was a major re-write of the software to achieve the similar look and feel goal. There is a commitment to restore the lost functions with future point updates.

If you run a bog standard mac of any persuasion from 2008 onwards with no additional fancy aftermarket software then yeah – from all accounts it is worth a free upgrade, from my perspective with a choice of two usb soundcards, keyboards, midi controllers etc and £4+ of music software and vst plug-ins it has proved to be the biggest pile of shite ever with latency in sound and glitchy playback of samples – thankfully i have time machine so i did a complete wipe and reinstalled 10.8 mountain lion

£4+ of music software

last of the big spenders 🙂

Upgraded. Didn’t really notice to be honest.

It has locked up once since but that could have been something else. Dunno. Didn’t really notice any difference in functionality.

Upgraded, but not sure it was worth it tbh. Uses far more RAM than 10.8, and only new feature I’ve noticed is Safari notifications, which no-one actually supports anyway.

Using it on a MacBook Air and Mini. The Air suffered from some WiFi issues (would stop Tx/Rx for a bit, but not drop the connection – turn off WiFi and back on and it’s fine), but that’s stopped happening now – I suspect a fix hidden in an update somewhere. Other than that no particular issues

Upgraded on day 1, 2009 MacMini with 8gb ram. Runs very well. No major issues from my perspective, many improvements

I suggest you browse the (excellent) MacRumors forums, there are MacMini and Mavericks specific ones.

Improvements

Finder tabs, multiple directories open so easy to browse and move files
File tagging, I’ve started to use this a lot
Tweaks to safari, notifications, power save features, excellent cloud support over devices (not just bookmarks but history is shared so easy to revisit a page you started on one device on another)
Big changes to way system handles memory and processor leading to improved performance and battery life
Multi monitor support with apple tv, can use tv as second screen wirelessly
Keychain storage of passwords and sharing between devices
Free upgrades to numbers and pages, I am not a massive feature user especially in pages so the benefits outweigh the drawbacks

Issues

Mail glitches with apple mail programme especially with gmail
New pages/numbers files cannot be sent with gmail as gmail rejects then
HP scanner software doesnt work but you can scan via Preview

Using it on three machines, 2010 MBP, 2010 iMac and 2013 MBA, all without any glitches. I actually prefer the interface, just slicker in lots of small ways. Nothing revolutionary mind.

The new memory compression feature makes a noticeable improvement to the performance of my machines when there’s little available memory. Compared with previous versions, Mavericks is a lot less likely to use swap and thus slow down your machine.
Scrolling and animations are definitely improved in Mavericks. The scrolling of messages in Mail.app is now silky smooth.
Safari 7 performs much better in Mavericks compared to ML, I’ve yet to see the dreaded dialog when Safari has to reload all of your tabs.
Multi-monitor support works better but is a little buggy. I find app windows are resized weirdly.
Calendar no longer has the ugly corinthian leather UI and the UX is improved.

In general a solid release.

Got a 2012 MacMini, Late 2013 iMac, and a 2011 MacBook Air, all now on Mavericks.

The desktops are fine, my MBA has been a world of hurt:

1) Wifi issues as mentioned by Italian Cheesyfeet
2) Random restarts whilst a sleep – searching google for “sleep wake failure” shows I’m far from alone
3) Chrome now freezes the whole machine, requiring a forced restart. This seems to be linked to (1)
4) All sorts of weird Flash issues with Safari

On the plus side, battery life is much better, and things like tabbed finder windows are neat. Pretty naffed off about the above though.

I didn’t bother as I suspected issues with Ableton but they claim it’s fixed in 9.1. I’m not convinced and don’t necessarily see any massive benefit to the upgrade as far as my usage is concerned anyway. Like the pro guys say; if your system’s working how you like it, why risk problems.

You all seem to have quite shiny new computers.. I have a mid 2007 I actually which I think is the oldest version that can be upgraded. I am no power user and quite happy with the way it runs on Mountain Lion.

Should I install Mavericks?

The Fopster – Member
Using it on late 2009 iMac. No horror stories, but very slow to do some simple things like switch users. No major advantages I can see. If it weren’t for needing it to run some software I need I would not have bothered, so unless you have a compelling reason to switch I can’t see any reason to bother.

my 2008 macbook was running like a total pig after install – i was really annoyed as I was perfectly happy with snow leopard, and had been seduced by the fact it was a free upgrade. Apparently going back from mavericks to snow leopard is not a straightforward job either

I just repaired the disk using disk utility (hold down CMD R during start up) and everything is good now. Phew

As per Fogster, multi user switching is so slow I’m spending the weekend creating a single account on our 13″ MacBook Pro. Single user on a 2007 iMac is fine though mail can be very slow to initially display messages on opening.

Have you run disc utility? – switching users loads better for me having done that

. I have a mid 2007

I also have a mid 2007 iMac; the upgrade was fine apart from some Bluetooth problems after waking from sleep that seem to be a feature of all recent upgrades. Some fettling with Bluetooth explorer was required to fix that. Generally it seems to have improved performance apart from startup times which remain appalling. Fortunately we seldom have to do that as it’s normally sleeping when not in use (now that Bluetooth is fixed!).

Have you run disc utility? – switching users loads better for me having done that

Not too late to retain both accounts on the laptop….

What should I run in Disk Utility then?

Generally it seems to have improved performance apart from startup times

An odd one that – when I first moved to mac the very short start up times (compared to Windows) was one of the nice benefits. It seems to have got much slower over the years. As you’d expect, a new mac sorts it – brand new iMac with FusionDrive and the boot is super quick

Running on a 2008 MacBook (2Ghz, 8GB RAM, SSD) here, and a 2012 Mac Mini Server (2.6GHz i7, 16GB RAM, RAID0 SSD config), no issues on either machine.

Both seems a little more snappy than before, but no real difference performance wise.

What should I run in Disk Utility then?

boot up the mac whilst holding down CMD R (stop when the apple logo appears)

you should then be presented with the OSX Utilities Window

Select Disk Utilty from there – then run verify disc. This will then tell you if there is something wrong with the disc (there was with mine). You can then select Repair disc

only took a few minutes

No problems on a 2007 iMac and a 2008 (i think) macbook. A little snappier all round – less lag on the UI, finder marginally quicker. Tabbed finder windows are useful.

Seems to be using a lot of RAM on my iMac though – it’s not effecting things as far as I can tell but have installed Memory cleaner to keep an eye on it.

Can you upgrade the OS (I’m running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard) without reinstalling software like MS Office?

Can you upgrade the OS (I’m running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard) without reinstalling software like MS Office?

Usually, yes.

tomtom..
Seems to be using a lot of RAM on my iMac though – it’s not effecting things as far as I can tell but have installed Memory cleaner to keep an eye on it.

Common observation but a red herring. Mavericks learns what applications you typically use and pre loads them when it has “spare time” in case you want to start them, this has the side effect of showing memory as used when in fact it’s not. If your live application needs more memory or you start a different programme the used memory is released instantly.

@zokes re the MBA sleep issues above try searching mac rumors forums.

Slow Mac start up IME is either a very full hard drive and/or things like the google drive application which seems to hang the machine while trying to talk to Google via internet

For those with very old machines I would check you have 4gb ram at least before upgrading OS. When I upgraded to Lion on my 2009 Mini with 2gb it ran like a dog and I suspect Maverocks would have been equally bad. Upgrading ram is generally quite straightforward on older machines and with a Mavericks upgrade you can have an “as new” machine (well almost)

Yes, not a problem.

@zokes re the MBA sleep issues above try searching mac rumors forums.

Yep, have done. Turning Time Machine backups off as suggested seems to have reduced, but not entirely alleviated the problem.

In the past few months, this macbook has crashed more times than any PC I’ve owned, and that’s only since Mavericks. Pity, as otherwise it was quite a noticeable speed and battery life increase. Is there any way to go back to ML until Apple stop testing alpha releases on its customers? I can tell why the thing was free now!